From Chancellorsville to Kosovo, Forgetting the Art of War

VINCENT J. GOULDING, JR.

Those timeless words seem more likely attributable
to Sun-Tzu than to their author, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson;
they are noteworthy because they were spoken before the 1862 campaign in
the Shenandoah Valley and not in the wake of the great flanking attack
at Chancellorsville. It is an important distinction. Chancellorsville was
a one-sided tactical victory without strategic significance. The Army of
Northern Virginia gained little except an overdeveloped sense of military
hubris that brought it to the slopes of Cemetery Ridge two months later.
Conversely, Jackson's tactical operations in the Valley Campaign are far
less worthy studies in battle management, but masterpieces from operational
and strategic perspectives. That said, Jackson's campaign in the Shenandoah
Valley paid much greater dividends for the Confederacy than Robert E. Lee's
"greatest battle" a year later. There is a reason for that.

The object of war is the imposition of will. It follows, then, that
the object of combat operations is to maximize the impact of military force
on the enemy, overwhelm him physically and mentally, and convince him that
further resistance is futile. Jackson understood this fully and created
in his Valley Army a specter out of all proportion to its size or battlefield
successes in May and June of 1862. He did this by exploiting will-o'-the-wisp
operational maneuver and the ability to hit hard where not expected. This
seemingly rudimentary combination allowed the Valley Army to dominate the
Union war effort in the eastern theater. In a theater of operations where
Federal concentration of forces and bold action might well have led to
the destruction of Lee's army outside of Richmond and an early end to the
war, Federal civil and military leaders were mesmerized by Jackson and
his tiny army.[2] History offers few better examples of operational success
serving strategic purposes.

As we enter the 21st century, the question of whether the military forces
of the United States offer the same prospect of operational success to
their strategic leaders is open-ended. Jackson's brilliance was the product
of audacity and maneuver, not numerical or technological superiority. He
did not have more men or a better cannon; nor did he achieve the Confederacy's
strategic goals by thrashing a succession of Federal armies. In fact, his
battlefield record in 1862 would have better supported his relief for cause
than elevation to corps command. Jackson won his battles in the minds of
Union soldiers in the field and decisionmakers on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Nathan Bedford Forrest might have coined the phrase "put a scare
in them." Stonewall Jackson embodied it. Jackson was also fortunate
enough to be blessed with superiors willing to accept transitory tactical
reverses if they contributed to the accomplishment of strategic ends. Robert
E. Lee has been universally canonized in American military writings for
his operational prowess, but seldom given credit for what may have been
his greatest attribute: lack of a zero-defect mentality.

The same is not true today. Unwillingness to brook tactical failure
or incur casualties has corrupted the age-old concept of offensive operations
into the narrowly focused cottage industry of precision strike. The poorly
defined concept of precision engagement has engendered in the minds of
too many a one-dimensional response to the infinitely more complex issue
of truly achieving strategic objectives. At its core is the ill-conceived
notion that the United States and its allies can intimidate, even defeat,
adversaries with information superiority and smart weapons.

Why Precision Strike Is Insufficient

Physical punishment has never been enough to accomplish political or
military ends. The Army of the Potomac was butchered at Fredericksburg
and humiliated at Chancellorsville, yet had its finest hour at Gettysburg.
Humans are a tough lot and have consistently risen to extraordinary levels
in the wake of a physical thrashing. If the American Civil War seems a
bit removed from today's events, consider Britons in the "blitz"
or North Vietnamese during "Rolling Thunder." Both describe a
human dimension worthy of study, but seldom considered.

Witness recent events in the Balkans. The air arms of NATO bombed a
small, economically insignificant country for ten weeks and inflicted tremendous
infrastructure damage, but provided little impetus to bring about a change
in policy by the Slobodan Milosevic government. Thirty thousand sorties
by more than a thousand aircraft left his army intact. In the absence of
forces on the ground, Serb combat units had no reason to leave concealed
positions, mass, and make themselves vulnerable to the air campaign NATO
was conducting. In fact, evidence suggests it was only the maneuver of
the Kosovo Liberation Army (a second-rate military organization at best)
against Serb forces that caused the latter to become "visible"
and vulnerable to effective air attack by NATO aircraft. Only then, as
his tactical military forces began disappearing before his eyes, did Milosevic
agree to come to the bargaining table. Save his army he must, and save
his army he did; ironically, it was NATO that declared victory.

Milosevic understood that territory, however coveted, is useless without
ground forces to control it and that, even if driven off "key terrain,"
an army in being need never admit defeat. Where there is no defeat, there
is only unresolved crisis. This is not a new concept. Put another way,
"the defeated state often considers the outcome merely as a transitory
evil, for which a remedy may still be found in political conditions at
some later date."[3]

While some would say NATO operations in Kosovo were a classic case of
precision strike accomplishing the mission, history will likely judge them
a 20th-century Chancellorsville. Clearly, NATO achieved a decisive and
one-sided tactical victory, and if the goal of US strategy in the 21st
century is to demonstrate tactical acumen at the expense of militarily
challenged adversaries, then the standard may well have been set. Much
like the air campaign itself, however, such thinking represents a shortsighted
view of the operational art.

Combat operations serve no purpose if they become ends unto themselves.
Time and Tomahawks notwithstanding, Clausewitz is as relevant today as
he was a hundred years ago. The fundamental nature of war changes with
neither the times nor the technologies used to prosecute it.[4] Recent
US military interventions have occurred in environments of brutality and
nonlinearity that more resemble the Thirty Years War than what we might
expect from modern man. Reluctance to put the life of US soldiers on the
line only exacerbates and accelerates the suffering of those we set out
to help.

During the ten weeks of NATO air attacks, untold numbers of ethnic Albanians
were murdered, over a million driven from their homes, and their country
left a shambles.[5] When the smoke cleared, the Serb army was left to fight
or brutalize another day. Recently, a former Air Force Chief of Staff challenged
those who have asserted that the NATO bombing campaign failed to save ethnic
Albanians from the atrocities visited on them by the Serbs. He noted that
the murder of six million Jews during World War II "accelerated as
Allied ground troops approached the death camps," but that "this
unhappy fact does not prevent us from concluding, rightly, that we won
the Second World War."[6] This very bad analogy overlooks two nontrivial
facts: first, the World War II Allies' war aims were not focused on the
death camps; and second, Allied ground forces had a still very much intact
Wehrmacht to contend with in 1944 and '45. In contrast, NATO's goal was
to stop the killing, and its ground forces never faced the prospect of
locking horns with the likes of a modern-day Panzer Lehr. The issue of
whether or not NATO "won the war" is yet to be resolved, but
the entire Kosovo operation begs two simple questions: Did it help the
victims of ethnic cleansing, and has the violence been curtailed? The answer
is negative on both counts.

The world's only superpower sent the strongest possible signal that,
while it is willing to conduct military operations in situations not vital
to the country's national interests, it is not willing to put in harm's
way the means necessary to conduct these operations effectively and conclusively.
Not only has this message been transmitted to potential adversaries, it
has also once again sounded the siren's song across America that military
operations are high-tech and bloodless affairs. Arrogance spawned by a
single one-sided "victory" is not the exclusive province of the
Army of Northern Virginia, and our 21st-century Cemetery Ridge awaits us
if we allow political expediency and transient technological advantage
to become the determinant of successful military operations.

The United States has chosen to ignore Jackson's admonition that we
"mystify, mislead, and surprise" our enemies. As long as America
has lagers full of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles and assorted other
precision munitions, it all too often also has an "on the shelf"
military response. Diplomacy has become an afterthought based more on consensus
of the willing (NATO) to "respond" than take the time to "shape."
This slippery slope will not go unnoticed by future enemies who are presumably
paying more than cursory attention to what is becoming the new American
way of war.

Eschewing the greater argument about vital interests and what the United
States is willing to risk in order to protect them, the fact remains that
success in military operations and the peace that follows can come
only as the result of proficiency in fully integrated sea, air, and land
operations. Technology does not, and never will, change that basic fact.
To make such proficiency a reality, military forces must demonstrate operational
and tactical competence enough to engender confidence in their strategic
leaders. In the minds of current US decisionmakers, ground forces equate
to slow response, high risk, and casualties. The advocates of precision
strike beat this drum constantly.

Three things need to change. First, strategic decisionmakers must accept
the fact that mission accomplishment might entail casualties. Second, the
services must develop the doctrine, organizations, training, and equipment
that will enable US forces to accomplish all missions quickly, effectively,
and economically. The Army and Marine Corps, in particular, must demonstrate
to the National Command Authorities that ground forces are a viable part
of economical military operations. Bosnia and Kosovo have already
proven they are a requirement. Third, military professionals must cease
the philosophical gravitation of maneuver to the exclusive province of
ground forces. Maneuver must engender the entire national decisionmaking
psyche and be as psychological as physical. It goes to the very core of
the oft-cited, seldom-achieved "shaping" segment upon which the
United States' national military strategy is founded. In the absence of
such a mindset, a true strategic view and usable operational art for the
21st century cannot exist.

Strategic Maneuver

Successful operational maneuver can occur only in conjunction with a
sound strategic counterpart. Successful maneuver at any level is derived
from reserving options for yourself and denying them to your enemy. William
Tecumseh Sherman would have called it putting your enemy on the horns of
a dilemma, a philosophy which must transcend the battlefield.

Military operations, even at the lowest level, have profound strategic
implications. Task Force Ranger in Somalia is a recent example. National-level
policies and decisions have an equally profound influence on the military
commander and can easily gore him on those same horns of dilemma. The fact
that "war is a serious means to a serious end" should of itself
caution senior leaders, in and out of uniform, from becoming the "irresponsible
enthusiasts" Clausewitz warned against.[7] Technology-inspired panaceas
which provide ad hoc tactical success may do so at the expense of long-term
strategic flexibility. At the national level, flexibility can only be the
product of a willingness to use all facets of the country's combined-arms
capability.

Excepting the demise of the Soviet Union, one could make the case that
the United States has not achieved a strategic victory since World War
II. This, despite the fact that it has demonstrated limited operational
and tactical acumen on a number of occasions. Even these successes will
prove transitory if the current trends of casualty- and failure-phobia
continue to gravitate to the tactical level. Mid-level commanders serving
on the edges of America's empire are now routinely quoted as saying that
force protection is their highest priority.[8] Such statements are a sad
commentary; force protection is a commander's inherent responsibility,
but it is never a mission, and accomplishment of the mission is
always the highest priority.

Lack of willingness to be unpredictable and take risk precludes total
victory at any level. Above all else, maneuver warfare is founded on those
very principles. There is something to be said for the adage "nothing
ventured, nothing gained." This is not to imply that US forces should
be recklessly employed by either the National Command Authorities or rifle
company commanders; however, if a man on the ground with a rifle is a required
factor in the overall equation for success, then he should be employed.
Statements to the effect that "if mission and force protection are
in conflict, then we don't do the mission"[9] will continue to unduly
restrict our forces as long as senior leaders tell us that the "well
being of our people must remain our first priority."[10]

Joint Vision 2010 postulates that information superiority will enable
the emerging concepts destined to characterize American military operations.
Perhaps, but maneuver warfare is predicated on more than bumper stickers
that postulate total knowledge of the enemy. Situational awareness encompasses
such additional factors as familiarity with a well-defined end-state, appraisal
of friendly capabilities, assessment of risk, and ability to adjust plans
on the fly. Knowledge of the enemy is important but never perfect, and
need only be good enough to allow decisionmakers to develop courses of
action that pit friendly strengths against enemy weakness at the operational
level. Operational planning doctrinally focuses on determination of the
desired end-state and identification of the enemy's center of gravity and
critical vulnerabilities at each of the levels of war.[11] Doctrine also
tells us that planning must additionally include analysis of the enemy's
desired end-state and our own centers of gravity and critical vulnerabilities.[12]
Expediency has no place in the equation. Shortsighted solutions that play
well in the media or pander to preconceived notions of public support generate
long-term problems that become yet more difficult to solve.

Expedient solutions since the Gulf War have centered around the related
issues of casualty avoidance and precision strike. These two concepts have
become inexorably linked, particularly when the United States finds itself
at odds with an adversary with any credible military capability. The result
has been the notion that modern warfare is a bloodless, high-tech affair
where the only national investment is in bombs (dollars) and not the lives
of American citizens. The danger in this kind of thinking is insidious.
There cannot be strategic maneuver when national policy becomes synonymous
with casualty avoidance and precision punishment. This reactive approach
to wielding the military option is attractive by virtue of its quantifiable
success in the media and apparent lack of human cost, but it fails to address
the ultimate human dimension of conflict. War is an interactive event that
both sides try to win by adapting to the other's initiatives. The side
that adopts the long view, remains flexible, and diligently applies lessons
learned from short-term setbacks will ultimately accomplish its ends.

American military actions over the past several years have developed
a predictable singularity. We bomb things that are easily identifiable
and don't move: bridges, power grids, and the ubiquitous command and control
center. Such targets are based less on an analysis of the enemy's center
of gravity than on "do-ability" and media visibility. Precision-guided
munitions are optimized for fixed infrastructure targets, not support of
operational maneuver. In effect, the United States has reverted to a high-tech
version of the famous Cold Warrior Curtis Lemay's "bomb them into
the stone age" philosophy. The great irony is that General Lemay's
proposed bombing of infrastructure in North Vietnam was labeled inhumane
economic warfare and rejected, despite the fact that thousands of US troops
were at risk on the ground. In the 1990s, with no ground forces at risk,
the United States has routinely bombed infrastructure targets that had
significant economic impact on combatants and noncombatants alike.

The results of precision strike against tactical formations have been
less compelling, and the lessons of Operations Desert Shield and Desert
Storm have not been lost on individuals and organizations unfriendly to
the United States. Enemies now seek the urban battlefield and have relearned
techniques of cover and concealment long atrophied during the Cold War.
NATO's initial post-Kosovo battle damage assessment claims have been tempered
by physical evidence suggesting that many very expensive bombs hit many
very inexpensive decoys or nothing at all. Battle damage assessment aside,
a sobering conclusion from all this is that the further the United States
gets from major theater war, the greater the demand for expensive munitions
which exist in finite numbers. Events since the Persian Gulf War would
indicate that military operations other than war (MOOTW) generate rules
of engagement that restrict commanders to the almost exclusive use of precision-guided
munitions (PGMs). Based on PGM expenditures during the ten weeks of bombing
in Kosovo, the "two nearly simultaneous major theater war" strategy
seems more than a little suspect. The Department of Defense has requested
$1.4 billion in supplemental funding to replenish stocks of PGMs used during
Operation Allied Force.[13]

The most precise instrument of war any country can produce is the man
on the ground. As military operations gravitate toward the MOOTW side of
the scale, US forces will encounter enemies who combine skill in tactical
deception and concealment with the savvy to exploit fear of collateral
damage and American casualties. Such enemies will require more than precision
strikes to defeat them, and our military operations will require more than
space or airborne sensors to assess them.

The battlefield of the 21st century will require forces on the ground,
yet the United States is loath to put such forces in harm's way. As long
as this remains the case, enemy commanders have no incentive to array their
forces for conventional military operations. Unfortunately, this does not
mean that these same forces cannot conduct ground operations that we justifiably
find reprehensible. The well-publicized discoveries of mass graves by the
initial NATO forces to enter Kosovo bear this out. Yet instead of examining
this fact as a "deficiency," NATO declared victory and stood
by while the media and politicians demonized the Yugoslav government for
political purposes. Strategic leaders need to get beyond the rhetoric,
look objectively at accomplishment of the desired end-state, and determine
what could have been done differently to make the operation more effective
in its totality. If stopping the bloodshed is one of the primary objectives
of military intervention, then declaring victory should wait until it has
truly been achieved. There is no victory in the Balkans.

Strategic Stumbling

The picture that begins to emerge is a United States quickly moving
down the path of establishing a diplomatic and military precedent which
describes a policy lacking workable options. Without options there is no
maneuver, only a throttle that enables us to increase or decrease the level
of punishment we mete out as our satisfaction with overall progress in
a given situation waxes and wanes. Too little time is spent shaping and
far too much responding.

The United States and its allies have become strategically hamstrung
by a well-publicized aversion to casualties. There is universal agreement
that the real issue is reluctance to incur casualties in situations not
in the national interest, but since US forces are routinely employed on
such missions, the argument is moot. This is not a new issue. Bismarck
questioned the use of his Pomeranian grenadier in the Balkans more than
a hundred years ago. The fact of the matter is that few nations have deliberately
squandered their soldiers' lives in the quest for world tranquillity, or
even dominance, and the United States is not the first to find itself confronted
by the thorny dilemmas inherent in superpower status. It is probably worth
remembering that "a great country can have no such thing as a little
war."[14]

When US forces are employed, the whole world is watching, the whole
world is judging, the whole world is learning. What the world is learning
now is that the United States will not put ground forces in harm's way
during the critical early period of intervention. When ground forces are
ultimately employed as "peace" enforcers, they are locked in
a secure enclave where they have minimal influence on post-hostilities.
While it is a marvel of American culture that US soldiers can enjoy lunch
at their sandbagged Burger King in Camp Bondsteel, Yugoslavia, one has
to wonder what people whose homes have been destroyed must think. From
the operational standpoint, it is intuitive that what goes on "outside
the wire" will become more and more vague to America's peacekeepers
the longer they remain in their self-proclaimed "metropolis."[15]
Our allies call it Disneyland.[16]

Situational awareness comes from more than intelligence reports and
overhead imagery, and an enclave mentality does more than protect US forces
from the "destruction, anguish, and hazards" of the peacekeeping
environment.[17] It monasticizes the peacekeepers to the point where their
presence is little more than a mass casualty waiting to happen. Reverting
to an enclave mentality, with soldiers conveniently centralized in a well-defined
area, is an open invitation for indirect attack. The lessons of Beirut
and Khobar Towers are still valid. Admittedly, both are worst-case scenarios,
but both happened. Even in the absence of catastrophe, however, there is
no development of overall situational awareness or kinship between these
soldiers and the people they have been sent to help.

The real unintended consequence is even more insidious and damaging.
The portrait of US ground forces becomes complete in the eyes of future
enemies: too valuable to be risked in combat, too soft and coddled to bear
the rigors of peacekeeping. The legacy of Stonewall Jackson's foot cavalry
has been consigned to the dusty pages of US military history.

It all makes one wonder why our soldiers are there in the first place
(probably the soldiers wonder as well). If the primary mission of US forces
has become their own force protection, there is no justifying their leaving
home in the first place, especially in view of the fiscal overhead incurred
by operating in this manner. The cost of Camp Bondsteel was estimated in
October 1999 to be $32 million and rising.[18] Once again, the employment
of ground forces has been characterized by "overhead" and a lack
of operational flavor.

Developing a force that is operationally capable and genuinely respected
by its enemies ensures force protection; surrounding the force with concertina
does not. Any nation's military leaders are responsible for providing forces
that give decisionmakers the options they need to maneuver on the strategic
battlefield quickly, effectively, and with the expectation that the loss
of human life will be minimal. The Department of Defense has demonstrated
room for improvement in all areas; yet the Joint Statement on the Kosovo
After Action Review devotes scant attention to enhancement of ground forces
in future operations. This, despite acknowledgment early in the paper that
"military force could not stop Milosevic's attack on Kosovar civilians,"[19]
at least not military force as NATO employed it.

In a National Security Seminar at the Army War College in June 1999,
a civilian participant made the statement that he was never prouder of
the United States than he was with the intervention in the Kosovo crisis.
When asked if he would have felt the same way if American ground forces
had been used to accomplish the mission more quickly to reduce the scope
of refugee exodus and atrocity throughout Kosovo, he was not so sure.[20]
His reasoning was that ground forces equated to friendly casualties. This
hesitation of an American citizen is reflected in the hesitancy of our
nation's leadership. The desire to do the right thing is tempered by the
realization that to do what is right, and to do it right, implies casualties.
Lessons learned from military operations need to extend beyond enhancing
what we most recently did to what we must do in the future. The military
landscape is rapidly changing, and buying more Joint Direct Attack Munitions
or Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles is not necessarily the answer.
Such weapons may well be part of the answer, but only a part.

Long-range precision strike will always be an option, but to truly put
future adversaries on the horns of a dilemma, the additional dimension
of equally precise combined-arms ground operations is an absolute requirement.
The National Command Authorities must have at their disposal forces that
provide options that are usable and cost-effective. Failure to do so consigns
the United States to a single-dimension military option, and consigns US
military forces to a powerful but in many cases inappropriate or even ineffective
tool of national policy.

Operational Maneuver

Operational maneuver cannot--must not--wait for arrival in theater.
Joint Publication 3-0 tells us that "the principal purpose of maneuver
is to gain positional advantage relative to enemy centers of gravity in
order to control or destroy those centers of gravity."[21] War is
not about positional advantage; it is about defeating the enemy. Operational
maneuver is not the first step in a scripted sequence of events designed
to achieve victory. Effective military operations are not conducted point-counterpoint
on a lacquered chessboard (or a flat screen display). Chess, unlike war,
is a gentleman's game where the players enjoy perfect situational awareness
and politely take turns moving their pieces. Combat is not a game. The
winner hides his pieces and takes a dozen moves before the enemy gets even
one. General Sir William Slim's sergeant major said it well when he counseled
the then-young cadet, "There's only one principal of war. . . . Hit
the other fellow as quick as you can, as hard as you can, where it hurts
him most, when he ain't lookin'."[22]

Operational maneuver must resonate with an ever-increasing cadence that
achieves psychological advantage at the outset and enemy defeat at its
termination. Mentally and physically, US forces must drive the tempo and
create that specter of dominance and invincibility Stonewall Jackson understood
so well. The United States and its allies are not going to intimidate future
enemies by bombing them or deploying technologically advanced weapon systems
to secure areas in theater. The 21st-century fighter will not be cowed
by diplomatic or military signals, just as the bully on the block was never
impressed with reason.

American military forces enjoy a profound geographical advantage from
the outset in conducting operational maneuver. Their operations will be
directed at enemies who are reached by coming from significant distance,
frequently over water. The oceans and seas of the world should be viewed
as high-speed avenues of approach and not as time-distance obstacles. US
military forces are, by their nature, expeditionary. If they are uncomfortable
with or unsuited for that role, they are irrelevant. To be relevant, military
forces must be quickly employable and already possessed of the training
and tools they need to accomplish the assigned mission immediately upon
arrival. Employing military units, however technologically advanced,
with the notion of "training them up" in theater is as inefficient
as it is dangerous. The deployment of Task Force Hawk to Albania in support
of Operation Allied Force graphically illustrates the pitfalls.

The notion of a "lodgment phase," as described in Joint Pub
3-0 is outdated and requires reexamination in light of enemies who will
seek to deny ports and airfields to US forces. It should come as no surprise
that China, for one, has concluded that one of the United States' most
exploitable vulnerabilities is its reliance on fixed bases in the region.[23]
To predicate future military operations on secure entry facilities and
conveniently located overseas bases breeds operational clumsiness and creates
vulnerabilities. Such thinking is predictable and invites the very casualties
that have become so integral a part of the national decisionmaking process.
Ports and airfields are potential killing zones for military forces that
tarry around them, particularly in the early stages of US intervention.
This transcends facilities "in country," and includes those conveniently
located elsewhere in theater. Future enemies will be able to reach out
across strategic distances. It is a basic and asymmetric approach to warfare
that is often alluded to but seldom taken seriously.

Focus must be on the enemy, not his facilities. From the moment the
decision is made to employ military force, the process of setting the tempo
and overwhelming the enemy begins. The fact that intelligence will be incomplete
and our knowledge of enemy dispositions sketchy does not matter. If there
is such a thing as information superiority, it is surely a chimera that
will be attained incrementally only as the situation develops. It will
not exist going in, nor can we wait to achieve it before commencing military
operations. Colonel Chesty Puller might have overstated it a bit when he
told his Marines on the eve of the Inchon landing that "we'll find
out what's on the beach when we get there,"[24] but there's some validity
to his cautionary advice. Intelligence is a constantly moving target that
improves only as the situation develops.

Emotional baggage rooted in the sometimes archaic concept of "fire
and maneuver" frequently drives us to wait for the one additional
piece of information that will better enable us to accomplish the mission.
The dogma that you cannot maneuver in the absence of fires is not only
passé, but counterproductive to high-tempo operations. If your mission
is to kill snakes, there are times when you're just going to have to kick
the rock to find out whether one is under it. The key to success is replacing
the fear of kicking the rock with confidence in your ability to strike
effectively before being struck.

Fire and maneuver are neither sequential nor separate components of
combined-arms operations. When our enemy disperses his forces to make them
less vulnerable to the threat of air-, sea-, or ground-based fires, he
has already reacted to the initial stages of our operational-level maneuver.
This reaction is a mixed blessing from the US perspective. On the positive
side, enemy military formations degrade their ability to conduct effective
military operations by hunkering down in dispersed and concealed positions.
This is a plus, however, only if we choose to exploit the situation and
fully comprehend that there is also a negative side. By holding the sword
of precision strike over our adversary's head, in many cases we will compel
him to resort to a style of warfare for which we are ill-prepared and for
which nonbelligerents on the ground pay a horrific price. When the United
States and its allies pose little threat to the military units that provide
tangible power and presence on the ground, enemy commanders are relatively
free to conduct the small-unit, "police" type actions that UN
forces uncovered the results of in Kosovo. The legacy of these depredations
goes beyond purely altruistic humanitarian concerns. The resultant climate
of reprisal and instability remains long after the precision strikes have
ended and precludes mission accomplishment in the truest sense. Ongoing
Albanian reprisals against the Serb population in Kosovo hardly describe
the end-state NATO was looking for.

Winning at the operational level requires the destruction of the enemy's
capacity and will to conduct any military operations. This equates
partially to the physical destruction of military equipment and the forces
that employ it, but much more to his cohesion and perceived ability to
carry on. Because we are fighting an enemy who wants to preserve what we
seek to destroy, US forces will find themselves with a window of opportunity
in which to capitalize on his fear of precision strike. While dispersed
and concealed, enemy forces are ill-prepared to conduct conventional military
operations and are susceptible to the first canon of maneuver warfare:
strike his gaps while avoiding his surfaces.

The conventional approach would describe gaps as isolated and vulnerable
enemy formations that can be overwhelmed through a combination of operational
and tactical surprise and effective fire and maneuver. Nothing new here.
The difficulty (and current deficiency) is integrating operational and
tactical maneuver. Traditionally, US forces have compensated for a lack
of true operational maneuver in ground forces by using a phased approach.
The notion of lodgment first, then "decisive combat and stabilization,"[25]
is the antithesis of operational dexterity. It squanders the opportunity
to exploit operational-level maneuver achieved en route to enemy territory
and results in degeneration to a battle of attrition as both sides seek
to mass combat power and sustainment in the vicinity of the lodgment. There
is no place for a lodgment mentality in doctrinal publications or in the
initial stages of future US military operations.

US maneuver elements must strike into areas of enemy strategic interest
which are defended either lightly or not at all. The intent is to "penetrate
the enemy system and tear it apart."[26] In some cases, this will
include attacks on centers of gravity, but more often on what are generally
referred to as critical vulnerabilities. The employment of ground forces
will not wait for every command post, armored vehicle, and strongpoint
to be identified and targeted. Such a capability obviously requires a tactical
self-confidence that is shared by operational and strategic planners. Once
on the ground, combined-arms maneuver units will aggressively seek out
enemy formations with a combination of organic sensors (air, ground, electronic)
and reachback to nonorganic assets. Enemy commanders will be placed on
the horns of a dilemma. They can remain hidden, dispersed, and combat-ineffective,
or they can begin to take the steps necessary to meet the threat presented
by potent ground forces maneuvering throughout the battlespace, oftentimes
between them and their sources of sustainment and reinforcement. The more
they react, the more vulnerable they become, susceptible not only to the
organic fires of the combined-arms maneuver force, but to the reachback
fires from air- and sea-based platforms. The enemy's downward spiral begins
and accelerates as an ever-increasing and well-directed tempo of operations
takes away his options and overwhelms him.

Getting There

Unfortunately, such a capability does not exist today. Employment of
US decisive force is predicated on forward-basing at best, benign ports
and airfields at worst. Neither assumption reflects the realities of military
operations in the 21st century, and both relegate employment of decisive
force to the "too hard and too risky" category.

Solutions to the lodgment dilemma generally fall into two categories:
deployment "from CONUS to combat," or to an intermediate staging
base prior to commencement of military activities. Neither is the answer
for ground forces. While the prospect of conducting combat operations directly
from the continental United States is attractive philosophically, it is
impracticable beyond small, specialized missions more properly categorized
as raids. As the potential for combat operations in their truest sense
increases, our ability to conduct them directly from the United States
diminishes proportionally.

The US Army's ongoing Army After Next program, charged with looking
at land combat in the 2025 time frame, began conducting strategic and operational-level
wargames in 1997. It became evident early in the process that the concept
of "CONUS to combat" was flawed and, if executed, in many cases
forced strategic decisionmakers into unwelcome situations.[27] Army futurists
are now looking more toward the use of intermediate staging bases in proximity
to the area of military operations.

While a step in the right direction, this approach has problems of its
own. Depending on erstwhile friends and allies to grant basing rights in
the increasingly complex and dangerous world is a questionable proposition.
Certainly, if they are proximate and available, US forces would be foolish
not to use them. Given the propensity of future enemies to carry the war
to wherever the threats to his success may be, however, America should
remain mindful that it will take a very courageous nation indeed to allow
US forces to launch attacks from its sovereign territory. The United States
and its allies experienced this problem time and again during the closing
years of the 20th century in Southwest Asia and the Balkans. The trend
is not likely to change.

Few would dispute that the deployment of decisive force to a major theater
war requires traditional entry points, a dependency that clearly describes
a US critical vulnerability. Enemies of the future will regard access denial
as a primary mission. To expect anything else is fanciful and dangerous.
Given US reliance on afloat prepositioned equipment to compensate for a
shortage of amphibious lift, both the Army's Afloat Prepositioned Sets
(APS) and Navy/Marine Corps Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) become
at once indispensable and archaic. Diesel submarines, mines, and easily
neutralized or targeted ports and airfields all describe serious threats
to a capability that has served the United States well since the 1970s,
but which requires a serious reappraisal. Reliance on sophisticated deep-water
ports or in-stream offloads within tank main-gun range of the beach should
be the stuff that causes strategic planners sleepless nights.

The best avenue of approach for ground forces may also be their best
forward base. It is no accident that the Navy and Marine Corps regard seabasing
as the cornerstone of future operational capabilities and are even now
exploring the key issues of sustainment, fires, and command and coordination
from the seabase.[28] Is such a configuration invulnerable to enemy attack?
Absolutely not. Is a seabase less vulnerable to attack than a fixed land
site and more responsive to a rapidly changing operational environment
ashore? Absolutely. New strategic imperatives, operational requirements,
and friendly critical vulnerability analysis necessitate new ways of thinking.

Conclusion

Maneuver is a strategic issue whose essence lies in the reservation
of options for yourself and the denial of them to your adversaries--at
all levels. It is not the exclusive province of the operating forces or
tactical units. Yet it is the responsibility of these units to develop
the capability to execute maneuver warfare and to give strategic leaders
the confidence they need that these forces can fight and win effectively
and economically. Strategic maneuver sets the tone and must begin with
leaders who are willing to use all the tools at their disposal to achieve
national objectives. These same leaders must not be intimidated by the
risk of tactical failure--even casualties--as they pursue strategic success.
The country will never produce another Stonewall Jackson if it doesn't
first cultivate another Robert E. Lee.

The doctrine, organization, and training to support the quick, decisive,
and temporary employment of US combat forces will follow, regardless of
the level of war. Accomplish the mission, turn the peacekeeping over to
coalition forces, come home.

If the situation then resurrects itself because of some misguided perception
that America's "foot cavalry" has returned to its US bases and
the coast is clear, let no future enemy fail to understand that we will
be back quickly, economically, and just as decisively. The word will get
out. Before long, enemies will come to understand that a US military response
entails more than precision strike. Successful combined-arms operations,
of which precision strike is a part, will create a true deterrent to those
who would threaten the vital interests of America and our allies.

2. Jackson's forces numbered anywhere from less than 3,000 to approximately
16,000 during the period from the battles at Kernstown to Cross Keys and
Port Republic. See James I. Robertson, Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the
Soldier, the Legend (New York: Macmillan, 1997).

4. See Alan Beyerchen, "Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability
of War," International Security, 17 (Winter 1992/93), 59-90,
for an in-depth discussion of the applicability of Clausewitz to the future
battlefield.

8. Don M. Snider, John A. Nagl, and Tony Pfaff, Army Professionalism,
the Military Ethic, and Officership in the 21st Century (Carlisle,
Pa.: USAWC, Strategic Studies Institute, December 1999), pp. 1-2.

9. Ibid.

10. William S. Cohen and Henry H. Shelton, "Joint Statement on
the Kosovo After Action Review," 14 October 1999, prepared joint statement
presented by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Hereinafter referred
to as Cohen and Shelton.

20. The National Security Seminar is a week-long annual event at the
US Army War College, during which non-DOD civilians participate with War
College students in a full spectrum of formal presentations and informal
discussions.

24. Robert D. Heinl, Victory at High Tide, The Inchon-Seoul Campaign
(Annapolis, Md.: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1979),
p. 77.

25. Joint Pub 3-0, p. III-18.

26. MCDP 1, p. 73.

27. The author has participated in a number of TRADOC-sponsored Army
After Next wargames conducted at Carlisle Barracks, Pa.

28. For detailed discussions of Navy and Marine Corps development of
seabasing as a future operational concept, suggested readings include Operational
Maneuver from the Sea, Ship to Objective Maneuver, Maritime Prepositioning
Force 2010, and The MAGTF in Sustained Operations Ashore, all
available through the Marine Corps web site, http://www.usmc.mil.

Colonel Vincent J. Goulding, Jr., USMC, is the Marine Corps Representative
at the US Army War College. He earned a B.A. degree in history from the
University of South Carolina and an M.A. in history from the University
of Oklahoma. He has held a variety of command and staff assignments, including
command of 3d Battalion 3d Marines (3d Marine Division), and Marine Barracks,
Japan. Prior to his current assignment, he was Director, Concepts Division,
Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Quantico, Va.